A former federal prosecutor of thirty years is blasting Merrick Garland in light of the Attorney General appointing a special counsel to investigate President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents after just weeks, with those documents being voluntarily identified and turned over, while taking 557 days to appoint a special counsel to investigate Donald Trump's refusal to hand over hundreds of classified documents.
Glenn Kirschner on Thursday afternoon told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace it "sure doesn't feel like Merrick Garland is sprinting" in the investigation against the ex-president, Donald Trump. "It feels to me like he was walking at a leisurely pace at a time in our nation's history when we needed a flat-out sprint."
Wallace began the segment by saying, "I want to understand the two very different triggers for the special counsel. I mean for Trump, it was eight back and forths with the National Archives, three with the FBI, a ... search at Mar-a- Lago, and an ongoing belief that the crimes involved handling of classified documents were being committed at Mar-a-Lago as well as crimes of obstruction of justice."
"It's my understanding based on the latest DOJ filings that there's a belief from the Justice Department that both are still happening today," Wallace noted.
"But even that didn't trigger the appointment of a special counsel," she observed. "It was Trump that that put that in motion when he announced his intention to run for president."
"In this case," she said, moving on the how Garland has handled the revelations that President Biden may have mishandled a small number of classified documents from his time as Vice President, "it was about, what, three weeks of looking at the facts and then a special counsel is appointed? Can you explain what looks like a very unequal application, the appointment of a special counsel?"
"So it's tough for me to explain the inexplicable," began Kirschner, who served as a prosecutor for the U.S. Army, where he handled, among others, espionage cases. He went on to serve as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the powerful U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, and has prosecuted RICO, espionage, and murder cases as well.
"But let me let me give it a shot because I do believe that Merrick Garland is guided by his own sense of ethics and his own determination to preserve the institution, for better or worse," he said, referring to the Dept. of Justice that had been corrupted by Attorney General Bill Barr and the others Trump had put in charge at DOJ. "And so I think he bends over backwards."
"I agree we heard about this special counsel, special counsel appointment for the Joe Biden documents, circumstances at lightspeed, and so I think we're kind of mixing apples and oranges there on the timing front."
"But I really think the question that is bothering me most right now, is why did it take Jack Smith's appointment on November 18 to all of a sudden see this increase in the pace and the scope of an investigation that should have been up and running at a full sprint? Ever since, I maintain, right after the insurrection, and it sure doesn't feel like Merrick Garland was sprinting toward the finish line."
"Was he running, Glenn?" Wallace asked. "What was the pace with which Merrick Garland was pursuing potential criminality on the part of Donald Trump and his inner circle as it pertained to January 6?"
"It feels to me like he was walking at a leisurely pace at a time in our nation's history when we needed a flat out sprint," Kirschner charged, "because I think he was old school in his approach to this investigation, handling it the way we ordinarily handle pyramid conspiracies, but this is not a pyramid conspiracy. I maintain it's not even a hub and spoke conspiracy. We should call it an octopus conspiracy with all of the tentacles that are splaying out and thrashing about."
"I think, Merrick Garland in the 24 years, he was a judge. He was a prosecutor before that, and a darn good one. I think he became too judicial, too circumspect. Not aggressive enough in me being sort of this this moment of danger to our democracy.
"I asked because DOJ is is a National Security Agency," Wallace explained. "I mean, it houses the nation's prosecutors. It also houses a National Security Division. And the world's national security crisis is that we are now exporting insurrections."
"What happened in Brazil is an extension of the language, the rhetoric and the playbook carried out here where our judicial system, our rule of law appears very sick," Wallace, a former Bush 43 White House communications director, a top campaign aide to John McCain's presidential campaign,
"As Glenn just said, our Attorney General is 'walking at a leisurely pace' in probing those accountable for the deadly January 6 insurrection here."